11 november 1989. Took some shirts to the laundry. Laundryman looked up, mock severe, head cocked, “I saw you!” he said accusingly. Instant guilt. What, where, with whom? Then I saw his sly smile. It was followed by the information: “I saw Rikyu.” Ah, he’d seen me in the films. “Hai, hai. Yoku gambatta.” In English this does not come out too well: “You did your best.” It seems to leave something unexpressed. Not in Japanese, however. In Japanese it is highly appropriate. I say the proper thing: “Yah, daikon datta yo,” which might be rendered as: “Naw, I was a real ham.” Small flurry of denial. Then a question rather un-Japanese: “Omoshirokatta?” “Was it fun?”
17 december 1989. The memorial gathering for Eugene Langston. White lilies, a rather severe picture of Gene in a black turtleneck, looking out at us. A few dozen of us, all elderly, all properly lining the walls, as though waiting our turns. Kamikawa in charge, that strange man with whose life Gene’s was so entwined and who is now heir.
Half heir. I do not recognize the other half it has been so long. Bald, owlish, thick glasses—it is Burton Watson with whom I went to university and seen rarely since. “Gene must have wanted me to have his books,” he says, surprised. “You will get considerably more than that,” I tell him, since he gets half the assets. He shakes his head. Does not understand why. Nor do I, but I know that Gene always approved of Burt. He liked his perfect translations, his care, his getting everything right. Just as did Gene himself.
The doctor who presided over the long, painful, protracted death stands up and for half an hour gives us a painful day by day account of the dissolution. A part of the reason for this lack of tact is ordinary insensitivity, an inability to feel for anyone else. But a part is to ward off criticism (after all the patient died in his care) by showing how good he was.
After that, some pieties from Kamikawa—so mealy-mouthed, impossible to imagine him as the fierce kamikaze pilot he once was. Then other voices from the past. I come last. I at least talk about Gene as a friend, and as a fellow human.
Afterward approached by several. People I thought I had never seen, yet here and there, a certain inflection, a way of blinking, a stance, I seem to recognize under these years. Then, swimming to the surface would come: a pretty girl, flirtatious on a summer day in 1947; a good-looking boy with a wide country smile from 1948; a studious young man with slick black hair—now bald. These were all aged members of the Tokyo University English Speaking Society whom I last met more than forty years before.
And time has been no more kind to me—the extent of the ravage was indicated by my being so often assured that I have not changed at all.
18 december 1989. Finally got to hear the main Kurt Weill work I had not—the comic opera, The Czar Gets His Photograph Taken. What heavy music for what slight entertainment! But I think the same about the Hindemith Hind und Zuruk. But when the couple puts on the tango record and sing over it, the work comes quite leanly alive. I think of the fat Fedorah, where the Chopin is magically sung to.
I wonder if I will ever get to hear and see those things I want to. I want to hear Rieti’s Noah’s Ark. I want to see Bresson’s Le Diable Probablement. I remember when I was ten and my passion was to hear Petrouchka, about which I had only read. But in those days there was no FM, no classical music on the radio at all, and records were not to be found in my small and isolated township. Then, finally, Stokowski made a recording of the whole score, on 78s, and I worked a month (washing windows) to save money to buy it. I ordered it, got it, carried it home, waited until my father was out, my mother busy, my baby sister quiet—and put it on. What did I think? I no longer remember. I was hearing a kind of sound that was new to me, though it was now in the late 1930s. I remember later being able to make nothing of the sound, the timbre, of L’Histoire d’un Soldat. It sounded scratchy, unfinished, to me. (And, I later read that the sound of Brahms sounded “raw” and “unfinished” to his contemporaries.) Petrouchka, however I took to at once, I remember, and played the records bare.
20 december 1989. Took Anthony Thwaite out for dinner. We have known each other since the fifties when he was here, young, shockheaded, and filled even then with that charming self-denial, that ability to “see through” himself, which is truly the first line of attack. He has never lost it. In fact, he has honed it. He never takes himself seriously in public, and nothing else but, I would imagine, in private.
We talk of much, of the old days, of [Dennis]Enright here, of [Edmund] Blunden, of poor dead Nigel [Sayers]. Also of his old nemesis James Kirkup, who quoted Anthony as saying something damaging about the Japanese, which he never said. Lawyers alerted. Flustered Kirkup cannot find letter he says he quoted from. Kirkup now in Andorra, where he has created the James Kirkup Commemorative Museum. I imagine him sitting there, waiting for pilgrims. Given the Japanese, a few will actually come. I do not know him. Met him once and experienced chemical aversion. “Chemical aversion, interesting term,” says Anthony, busy with his salmon. “There probably is just such a thing. After all, there are affinities, elective or otherwise.”
21 december 1989. Alice Waters to dinner. How do you take Chez Panisse to dinner? No use spending money on second-rate European. I take her to my Ueno “Edo” place. Cheap, good, and odd. She picked at her toriwasa. Too strong? Too strange? Her husband spurned his. The pheasant on rice went better. Later I took them to the last phallic stone in Tokyo, on the Ueno island. This impressed, as did the ruined lotus lake. Alice still her same gentle, opinionated, charming self. She is like the girl next door who has made good.
26 december 1989. Cut a big slice of ham from the box of meats sent me this year, as every year, by Hashima Kunio who keeps remembering that fifteen years ago I got him to America to school, and off the rap for knocking up a fifteen-year-old student at the school where he was athletic instructor. Then steeped two slices of cornbread from the corner bakery in whipped egg and milk. Fried both. Topped this with butter and the Maine maple syrup that Marguerite Yourcenar sent me. I still have a bit of it left, years now after her death. She sent it me because I had given her a large loaf of bread when I first went to see her. I had no idea she so missed bread and had not actually intended to give her the loaf. But she saw it, wanted it, got it, and never forgot. Eating my concoction, French toast with ham, I remember the past. Madame Yourcenar with her Breton blue eyes and Kunio, still a boy, with dirty fingernails and a sly smile.
30 december 1989. On the Ginza. Many tourists, mostly American it seems. Seems from their clothes. If the Japanese dress up, the Americans dress down. Such a variety of tracksuits, sweat shirts, overalls, jeans, lumberjack shirts, stocking caps. And all of these are city people, of course, professionals, moneyed or else they would not be here. The false sartorial egalitarianism of the Americans. Jeans on those who never turned a day of manual labor. Was it Veblen who spoke of the affectation for the proletariat as one of the signs of decadence? And by comparison how dressed up and polished the Japanese look. How fifties.
1 january 1990. I was sound asleep when the New Year was ushered in. Did not even hear the bells. Yet I seem to remember this New Year. In Things to Come it was the Year of the Wandering Sickness. People in 1990 tottered around until they dropped dead. In the real 1990 we have AIDS. The coming era, the twenty-first century, is all togas and towers and totalitarianism.
I go to see Patrick [Lovell] and [Yoshihara] Akira for the traditional breakfast of New Year’s food. Together we go to the Benten shrine at Ueno and I make a prayer for Dae-Yung. Benten ought to like that. She was always a sucker for a handsome face. Then go to the phallic stone on the little island, the last from old Edo. Here my prayer is more fervent and more personal. I also put a hundred yen coin on the stone urethra opening. Then take it away. If I don’t someone else will.
New Year’s Day in Tokyo. Even now it takes me back. The streets are empty; seats in the subway; people stroll. And people smile, too, and look at each other. There are fewer Walkmen stuffed in ears, not so many manga opened on the l
ap. And little of the blind indifference that Tokyo now usually exhibits.
9 february 1990. Dinner with Makiyo. He was once a young Kyushu office worker who hated his job. Now he is president of Ace Corporation, a Tokyo land-sale company with branches in Seattle, L.A., and Beppu, which is where he is from. He hires his father and brothers, makes a great deal of money, and every day is interesting. Next month he is going to fly me down and back, and put me up at a grand hotel in Beppu so I can see the operation and meet the family again.
18 february 1990. The last day before Election Day. Very noisy. Japanese incumbents have only one way of soliciting votes—sound trucks. Numbers roam the streets, shouting. This begins two weeks earlier and continues daily, the pitch becoming higher and higher.
Today, they are hysterical, gabbling into their microphones, panting, racing, and sobbing. This is because they must attempt to indicate, through voice alone, the extent of their striving and hence the depth of their determination.
“I am Suzuki Taro. Suzuki Taro. Remember my name. Suzuki Taro. I am doing my best, my level best. Suzuki Taro, Suzuki Taro.” Over and over, the accent now agonized, so that we may visualize the tearful but determined gaze, the straining but valiant heart, and the gasping but dedicated breath.
The degree of mimesis is extraordinary. If other countries ran their elections this way there would be general laughter because the effect is to the Western ear so false. In Japan, however, the intention is the deed. Though everyone knows this is play-acting of a most amateur order, it is nonetheless accepted as a sign for what it stands for and is hence (Japanese connection) the thing itself.
With Tom Wolfe.
19 february 1990. The outcome of all the noise is that the Liberal Democratic Party (which is neither liberal nor democratic) again captures its majority, and the opposition, divided as always, falters. Japan has declared its priorities. It prefers the convenient, the known—it spurns opportunity for change and a danger of instability. Stability: This the Japanese want more than anything else. Here any surprise is an unpleasant one. And the highly unpopular LDP sales tax is now to be engraved in stone.
24 february 1990. Lunch with Tom Wolfe, who is here to work up a novel. It has some Japanese in it, and he has come to see some Japanese. Tallish, wide forehead, gray eyes, and much sartorial splendor. He mentions this. “I guess I am old-fashioned,” he says in reference to his Edwardian vest, his watch chain, and his wide-brimmed hat. But it is also a way of dress that alerts people. I had taken him to the Press Club, not the brightest or liveliest place, and everyone recognized him at once and several came sidling up.
He is also interested, understanding, curious. Says very little about himself unless one asks. Wants to learn. Is here for that reason. Is particularly interested in what happens to art here, how it turns into money. Tells me about the changed art scene in New York. The days of elegant galleries are over. Instead, one goes to the auction houses. So popular are they that room after room has merely a TV in it and an agent who transmits the bids. Talks also of parties held where the host invites friends to “observe” as he bids, higher and higher. “Of course, he must acquire or else there is no point to the event. Consequently a number of bankrupts.”
Took him to Tokyo City Office, where they were polite and awed, and even honest when he asked if there were ethnic problems in Tokyo. (Yes, of two varieties: one, the resident Korean/Chinese minorities; two, the influx of Southeast Asian illegal workers.) Afterward I filled him in on the details of each.
25 february 1990. Lunch and dinner with Sarah [Gilles]. She has been working by day for Vogue and with the [Rolling] Stones at night. Mick [Jagger] wears a scarf around his lower face when outside. A cold? No, no. So long as one doesn’t see the mouth he is not recognizable. Also, ah, these working class boys, so refreshing. Mick fucks anything standing still. Does this happen to Sarah? I wonder, then decide no because she is one of them, one of the boys. Not interested in girls, however, her own boyfriend probably squirreled away somewhere; she is a member of this late-twentieth-century version of Our Gang.
Interested in abstract fucking, I tell her how Paul Getty’s then-wife led me to the top of the Moroccan palace and opened the grille, and we looked down on what she identified as Mick’s bare bum as he pumped away at someone whom I later recognized by her hair ribbon. Inspired, Sarah and I decide to go to the fabled DX Gekijo.
What a disappointment. It has been completely redone. Now the girls merely come out and do their dance, then their dildos, then each other, and finally clean the patrons’ hands with towelettes, and then loll and let themselves be fondled, during which they talk.
Imagine these sex goddesses—for so they once appeared—now descending and showing bad teeth in the guttural accents of Gunma. There was also a new and most unwelcome type—the hoyden. She did an eccentric naked dance, with splits, then came back and had a talk show. Also carried a small rubber hammer with which to hit playfully the heads of those customers who were rubbing her too hard or in the wrong direction.
The old air of mystery, of primitive religion, the innocent spectacle of customers shedding trousers and engaging in the sacred act of love—all this is gone. Customers no longer climb up. Instead, they stick in a finger or two and are admonished with rubber hammers. The worst is that the image of the goddess is gone. That of the kindergarten teacher, the indulgent mother, never far away, is now brazenly laid bare.
With Kurosawa Akira. kawakita zaidan
With Oshima Nagisa. kawakita zaidan
There is also a nasty undercurrent. In the front row are some Chinese—tourists or students or workers. Not much Japanese was spoken among them. Ms. Hoyden made a lot of this. Sly insults in the tongue her guests do not know. Undercover snickering from the audience. Man next to me, jovially, “Oh, these Chinese. They just don’t understand.” Don’t understand what? asks the suspicious foreigner. “Well, our ways, we Japanese.” Even when currying cunt, it is still we Japanese against all.
However, Ms. Hoyden got her comeuppance. Flushed with her success she took on Sarah. “Oh, I want that lovely white lady to take a picture of my pussy,” she said, brandishing her Polaroid. I said no. She turned on me, “Even though you speak Japanese and all, you got to let the lady speak for herself. Nice little white lady.” “Nice little white lady is not lesbian,” I crisply averred. Loud laughter from the crowd, pouts from hoyden.
Then her big mistake: she harangued the crowd. Accused us of being stingy in not taking picture of pussy (five hundred yen the crack), and did so with no placating humor. Crowd grew cool, cold, and then sullen. Too late she sensed the turn against her. Beating a naked retreat she one last time turned to face us. “Why don’t you just all go home.” Ironic applause. I had to apologize to Sarah. Yet another aspect of old Japan vanished.
1 may 1990. In the evening at the U.S. Ambassador’s residence, the reception for Martha Graham. She is ninety-six now, and we had expected her to be wheeled in like the cake, but the Armacosts always do things well: There she was, in another room, enthroned on a teak chair, and we were allowed in several at a time, like pilgrims.
She looked very Chinese—perhaps the chair suggested that. But Ming—late Ming. Her hair was pulled back tightly and she wore jewelry, like the idol she was. And, she looked lacquered, a living effigy. Cordial, smiling occasionally, and then, often, that terrible lost look that very old people have, like an aged child who has forgot its way. Then a graceful and unselfconscious recovery, and she was nodding and smiling. Then again, that awful lost gaze.
I heard the press conference was like that. Periods of lucidity, periods of blankness. Talk with an acquaintance about Copland, nearly that age himself now and even worse off. Some days there, some not; some days remembers everything, some days nothing. Not Alzheimer’s—that rarely permits these merciless retreats to sanity. No, just old age, and the dimming of the brain.
And I first saw them both when they were half this age. New York, the forties. Appalachian Spring. S
he had danced and he was in the audience. Smiling, bowing, hand in hand, the two of them. I did not know Aaron then, but I still remember him best smiling from the stage.
The notables lined up. A few of the American ladies attempt a curtsy. I did not join the line. The ambassador gave a speech. “Martha Graham: if America had a living national treasure, she would be it.” Yes, that is what she would be, staring straight ahead, stiff in her chair, her jade earrings barely moving—a living national treasure.
23 may 1990. Party for Kurosawa—eighty now and just returned from the Cannes festival. Prolonged applause upon his smiling entrance. Like royalty. But then he has always been tenno [emperor]. The difference is only in the new affability. This is stressed in the various speeches. Fat old Yodogawa Nagaharu, TV film fan, kept exclaiming, “And there I was back in the old days, I wrote all the ads for Sugata Sanshiro; so maybe thanks to me, Kurosawa is what he is today, ha-ha. But seriously now, what I want to remark upon is the difference. . . .”
A great difference. In many ways. Kurosawa, who so rightly scorned the Japan Academy Awards for years, now takes money from Lucas and lets Dreams be “presented by” Spielberg, now goes to the Hollywood Academy Awards, now allows Warner’s send him to Cannes. However, such thoughts as these do not intrude. Instead, Oshima makes an emotional speech and says, “Thank you, thank you, Mr. Kurosawa,” he who only a decade ago was saying coldly that Kurosawa was what was the matter with Japanese cinema. Best speech was Ryu Chishu’s. He must be near ninety. He stood there, now much older than when he impersonated himself in Tokyo Story, and said, “I don’t really know what to say. Congratulations anyway. I’ll step down now. Thanks anyway.”
24 may 1990. In the park, stopped to talk to the resident prostitute. Pageboy, sensible shoes. When in spirits, given to wisecracks. “Haro daringu,” in English. Followed in Japanese by, “Real empty tonight. I only did two.” “But that is good, isn’t it?” I ask. Shake of the pageboy, one hand reassuring the breasts. “Good? No, three or four is average.” “What was the most?” “Ten!” “Ten in one night?” “Between the hours of 7 and 11. Ten!” “You were busy.” “I was just flying around.” Laughter. Then, “Not so hot tonight. One in the bushes, one in the ladies’ john. No sense taking that kind to a nice hotel.”
The Japan Journals: 1947-2004 Page 31